American

I've been chastened for missing Orson Welles' birthday last week.  It's just that I don't generally put up tributes that properly require two hours worth of YouTube videos.

Welles, of course, was the brilliant stage and screen director who ended up a parody of himself.  I'm being a bit unfair, but he did spend his last years surrounding himself with sycophants and whoring himself out to make money to complete his projects which, being films, were not cheap. (To paraphrase a Billy Wilder line, he made a very superior income from a very inferior wine.) Alas, even as he was celebrated by his contemporaries, he finished very few films in his last two decades, and many of those he'd made earlier were compromised due to lack of funds and troublesome shooting schedules.

His reputation today seems unassailable. While his theatrical work is mostly forgotten (because that's the nature of that art), his reputation in cinema is as high as ever.  His first feature, Citizen Kane, made when he was in his mid-20s, easily (too easily) wins every poll as the greatest film ever, and Welles also wins as the greatest director.  And though he never topped his debut, a fair number of titles of his too-small filmography are considered significant, and there isn't a single one that doesn't have a champion somewhere.

He was also a decent actor, though given to hamminess and relying too much on his beautiful voice.  He started as a leading man but his ever-widening girth turned him into a scene-stealing character actor, where he may have been more comfortable. (I think even if he kept his weight down he came across as too intense, even creepy, to have sustained a career as a romantic lead.) He also used that voice to earn his keep, first in radio, and later in countless ads and voiceover work for whomever signed the check.

I always thought he got off on the wrong foot in film.  Not Kane itself, but the circumstances surrounding it--a story based on the still-powerful media baron William Randolph Hearst.  It didn't scuttle the film (though Hearst tried), but it put Welles in the "dangerous" category? His second film, The Magnificent Ambersons, was sliced up by the studio when it tested poorly, and Hollywood seemed to relegate him to the failed boy genius category.  Though he had good relations with many of the movie moguls, when his stuff didn't show a profit, the studios ultimately ran from the former wunderkind.  I often wonder if just one major hit early on could have given him enough clout to continue operating freely.  Or even a prestigious Oscar-winner that showed a decent profit.

Then again, I'm not sure if a man like Welles could have ever operated under the studio system, nor am I sure if his tastes would have ever been accepted by a wide public.  For that matter, there's a good argument to be made the he was self-destructive, or at least undisciplined--plenty of ideas but not enough follow-through.  Either way, in his later films, sometimes the strained circumstances show (especially in the sound).  Here was a man who quickly figured out how to take advantage, technically, of what the studios had to offer.  But he needed those top below-the-line people, not to mention a clear and financed budget, to be at his best.  That he still managed to do fine work while scrounging for funds tells you something, I guess.

Welles was a bon vivant, a boulevardier, but though he may have come across as a continental type (who spent years living in Europe), he always struck me as the quintessential, self-made, can-do American.  Which makes me wonder if Europeans viewed him as an American, or as one of their own who just happened to be born in Wisconsin?

Here's one of his last works. A cri de coeur, or just another whiskey ad?  You tell me.



I don't mean to insult my readers, but they're playing "The Third Man Theme" in the background, a song associated with one of Welles' best screen performances.